Once I saw that "Real" is posting I didn't even bother to go to pg 2, 3 and 4. Vote all the idiots out I say.

 

He completely dodged my response. He knows I'm right.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hhJ_49leBw

This goes for more than just Detroit, I am native to Memphis and our city is a dump.

 

For one, no one has shown me to be wrong on any significant claim that was not merely my opinion. I will point out that everyone on both sides of this issue speaks as if they are right. I can't figure out why you hold me to a different standard (other than you happen to disagree).

Most Senators DO know what's in this bill. I believe that our law-makers take their job seriously and the party of "NO" has gone through this bill with a fine-toothed comb and brought ever objection (valid or not) to the floor of the House and Senate. To say the Senators don't know what's in the bill ignores the fact that they have been working on it non-stop for twenty-some consecutive days and parlimentary procedure requires that those in opposition have the ability to bring their objections to the floor. Given these self-evident facts, how could you believe they don't know what's in there?

Oh, you are referring to the objections of right wing Senator Demint? That was a terrible public display of his lack of knowledge of Senate rules. The same language has been used many times by Senate Republicans including rules they enacted on Medicare Part D and the Democrats were not ignorant enough to even raise objection. This does not prohibit future lawmakers from making changes to the bill, it only prohibits those changes without 2/3 majority vote beforehand. That is due to basic Senate rules. The fact that Demint didn't understand them is a terrible embarrassment to him.

So yes, it's much ado about nothing.

Actually, not "nothing", I am offended to know we have a Senator who is that ignorant about the very rules that govern the Senate floor. Or maybe it was just a time-wasting stall tactic that could provide his right-wing robots some talking points to stew over (knowing full well the American public does not understand Senate rules either). People hear this drivel and say "We gotta get those bums outta there" without bothering to check the facts.

The Republicans are all about image and nothing about substance when it comes to representing the average American citizen.

No, this bill is not perfect, far from it, but it's a step in the right direction and sorely needed. It would have been far better had it not been for Republican obstructionism and delay. That is no way to run a legislative body. Those who object to the bill are either listening to the distorted complaints of far-right Republicans, eager to paint their opposition as failures or they are far left wingers who object to the give-aways to private insurance companies.

Contrary to what you have heard, this bill is actually designed to shift the burden of healthcare from the government to the people. But it does have some subsidies for some lower income Americans so they can finally afford healthcare insurance. That is not the primary effect of this bill, the overall effect of the bill is to reduce the financial burden on government.

Future Congress's will no doubt fine-tune and improve the bill as needed.

 

That's true for most large American cities, especially in the last 10 years. If you want a shocking contrast, visit a modern European city like Copenhagen, Helsinki, Barcelona, Berlin, Prague, Madrid, Bolongna, Munich, etc, etc, etc.

If "leftist" policies are the reason for American urban decay, then why are do so called "socialistic" European cities offer such a wonderful contrast?

No, the decay of American cities is due to the loss of earning power of middle America and the flight to suburbs caused by traffic jams (from lack of modern public transit) and crime (from failed drug and social policies including a prison system that turns offenders into hardened criminals).

Every American city once had a state of the art electric trolley system but it was gutted by Republicans (representing oil and tire companies) who insisted diesel busses were the future of public transit.

But back to modern world cities, if the current decay of urban America is due to liberal social policy, then why do more liberal nations have cleaner, more modern, more livable urban areas than the US?

 

Great video, I love all the Hope Change Obama signs.

 

Real the more you type the more you sound brainwashed by the left. Kinda funny because you almost always point out that anyone who disagrees with you is misinformed/brainwashed by the rightwingers. Pot meet kettle.

 

Compare the classes and races of people that live in those cities and compare them to ours... The sense of entitlement runs stronger through some groups of people than others and those people are still held in slavery today just in a different form largely by the pro-government movement.

Also, do not underestimate the problems that are going on in Europe that we don't hear about on the news, their crime rates are climbing quicker than ours and their debts are much worse than ours.

The decay of america has come from the abandonment of our original principles, beliefs, and freedom... people these days are getting 'free things' and 'freedom' mixed up. The rest of your statements are hog wash, my family owns a logistics company that has been around since 1865, don't try to come up with some kind of fake argument that republicans were trying to help big oil and they ruined the cities. Are there republicans and democrats that like oil? Yes. But it is not the reason that cities are a dump. The market demanded a better way of travel and shipping means... trollies and public transportation is not the reason cities are a dump

 

My responses (mostly to Real) about health insurance reform. First the bill is not health care reform it is health insurance reform. The goal of the bills are to lower the cost of health insurance. They do nothing to lower the cost of health care. The insurance companies are currently making approximately 8% profit on their policies. The government is going to increase their cost of doing business, by mandating no pre-existing condition exclusion and requiring no life time cap. These two item alone are huge. Who pays for those increases? The people who must buy health insurance. Furthermore the government is going to limit the amount of money a company can keep. This formula has not been developed yet, because the person who is going to develop it hasn't been appointed yet. This is neither good nor bad it just is. Depending on who gets the position the formula could result in companies able to keep 100% above the medical loss ratio or 8% of the medical loss ratio. Medical loss ratio has not been defined and nobody knows what it includes.

Not only is the bill going to limit the amount of profit carryover it does not allow for loss carryover. It specifically states the maximum percent allowed to be retained in set on a year to year basis. So if a company loses money this year they don't get to roll that amount over to next year to even the years out. Again depending on how the appointee decides to run things this could be very bad or just bad. The insurers are limited in how much money they can hold. They are also limited to how much they can charge in premiums. The most expensive policy can be no more than 2x the least expensive policy. That sounds great to those who would be in the higher priced policies, except if the insurer wants to ensure they do not lose money they will charge the higher risk people (read old people) more then cut the premium in half for the lower priced premiums.

A bi-partisan bill would have been better, but it is difficult to do that when one side of the Congress is locked out of the drafting rooms. There have been several Republican attempts at presenting their ideas, however the Democrats have told them sorry that won't work in our bill. Once all of the ideas of the Republicans are thrown out there is nothing left for them to do but say, "No, we don't like your bill and we will not vote for it."

As far as is the price tag is worth it. There are roughly 45 million people in this country without health insurance. Even the Democrats say their bill will only cover 94% of the population. 6% of the population of this country is roughly 18.5 million people who won't receive coverage. Of that 45 million approximately 12 million are illegal aliens. So once the math is done this bill costing in excess of an estimated 850 billion dollars is only providing coverage for 14.5 million people. Since the majority of the paid benefits don't take effect until 2013 that is a cost of about $8400 per year per person receiving coverage. That doesn't even take into consideration that many of those who do not have insurance coverage don't want the coverage, even though they can afford to buy it. I went without insurance for several months a couple years ago and was injured. The cost for care wasn't too bad. In total I paid $150 for a severely sprained ankle, including doctor office visit, x-rays, and the medical stuff to take care of it. For most people who do not have on-going medical issues, it is probably cheaper for them to go without insurance and pay the bill if anything does happen than to pay the bills.

Unfortunately many boarder cities near Canada have reciprocal agreements with many US hospitals for emergency care. The Canadian hospitals with these agreements do not have the capacity to handle a lot of emergency cases and many are shipped to US emergency rooms for care. These costs are not taken into consideration when per capita medical expenses are figured. Neither is the fact that on whole the US population is very vein and pay for unnecessary cosmetic that is not widely nor freely available in other countries. The US also has one of the largest populations of athletes. This results in many more sports injuries than any other country. In addition (I know it sounds contradictory but it isn't) the US has a very large percent of its population listed in the obese or overweight categories.

When you take into consideration the income levels, health care in the US is not too much more expensive than many other countries. One I personally did a comparison with was the cost of care in the US with the cost of care in Canada. Once income differences were taken into consideration the actual difference in cost was less than $3000 per year. For that $3000 we get faster treatment. Is it worth it? Since the wife had brain surgery for a tumor, and I had surgery to repair torn cartilage. I will say a resounding, yes it is worth it. If we lived in another country (her tumor was not at the time life threatening) she could have been driving until she finally had a seizure and possibly killed your family. Recently the wife was having serious medical issues. It took 11 months to figure out what was wrong. The issues were not life threatening and she would have suffered much longer if we lived in some other country. The end result was she was having a bad reaction to the medication she was taking. Her reaction appeared to be very similar to the symptoms of issue she was taking the medication for, so obtaining a diagnosis was difficult. If I had to wait for the surgery to repair the cartilage it would have resulted in arthritis, as it is I only ache when it is very cold out.

I think if the Democrats are able to maintain they will find this bill does nothing to decrease the costs of health care. As a result they will try to take more direct control of the system. Instead of completely throwing out our current system, why don't they take smaller steps that would work to increase the efficiency of the system and lower future cost increases. Medicare/caid has not been balanced at all in recent years and the Democrats idea of balancing it is to cut more money out of the program. That is a good place to start. Get medicare/caid working properly then I would consider your ability to develop a huge system for the entire population.

 

Great vid SuperFX4. I just forwarded it to my politicos. There is a group around here that has full intentions of making the Texas Representatives responsible and responsive to the voters. You'll probably start hearing about them this summer.
Real, Yer a hoot. Nobody can be as dumb as you. But I appreciate yer taking the heat so that so many can voice their opinions for what they know is right. Yer just what ever board needs, somebody to stir the pot.

 

Wow. Now I'm starting to feel a little sorry for you. You live in a much scarier America than I do.

Reuters AlertNet-GENEROUS US SUPPORT AIDS MILLIONS OF HUNGRY POOR

CAF-International comparisons of charitable giving
November 2006

Wikipedia-Health Care Spending as % GDP

I don't know what's going on where you live, but where I live people are generally compassionate. This entire nation is a compassionate one. More so than any other. You don't seem to understand that we aren't just paying to stabilize illegal immigrants. There are progressives would would like to label themselves "humanitarians" because they take money from tax payers and spend it on the poor, the downtrodden and on illegal immigrants. When thoes progressives happen to be our elected representatives what that amounts to is legislated compassion. It's unconstitutional. It's counterproductive, because the people who have traditionally given to charities will tend to do so less if the government is just going to take our money and spend it on thier narrow agenda.

Like I said, I don't know what's going on where you live. Where I live, I see compassion every single day. I live it.



Not enough credibility? Says who? How is that measured?

If I want to know what the bill says I have to read the bill. I don't have time to read a 2k bill, that isn't even available for viewing. I have read several parts of different versions of the legislation. Enough to know that there are some things in there that will most definitly hurt the people in this country. things like, NO ONE will be denied health care. What can be done with your personal information. Who determines what all insurers must provide as "acceptable coverage". Who will set fees for service. How care will be rationed.

I don't need or want you to hold my hand. I'm merely inviting you to show us all some of the reliable sources that you use. We might all better understand your points if you were to show us your reliable sources next to our sources, right-wingers who have dissected the bill looking for talking points. If you are so certain that you are right and the rest of us are wrong, one would think that you would be able to contrast our right wing spin with tons of information to back up what you claim. You won't. Why? Talk about not enough credibility.

 

"whoever cares for a stranger has cared for me"

Hate to break it to you Real, but that verse refers to someone helping out a fellow Christian.

I love seeing these wicked liberals twist the Holy Scriptures to suit their worldviews. They deny the Truth of the Bible, yet misquote Scripture to try to shove socialized programs down our collective throats. William Jefferson Clinton did the same thing.

"And the King (Jesus) shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."--Matthew 25:40

 

Been following this 'debate' (if you want to call it that since Real has to have the last word.)

I'll just say this: The Federal Government's estimates for the costs of Medicaid/Medicare in the 60's ended up being off by 10 TIMES what they had estimated.

If anyone thinks that socialized medicine is going to come in at 'only' 1.1 trillion over 10 years, well, I have a bridge in N.Y.C. I would like to sell you. P.M. me for more information.

 

Real
I would be willing to bet that you have never once stopped to help a stranger or someone in need. People like you don't do that. You're too wussy, afraid to get your hands dirty and bleed a little. There is the rare case of someone being injured and people standing around watching, but not too often.
3 months ago in Atlanta, I saw a car flip and catch fire in the interstate median. I, along with 3 other cars, pulled over, got my fire extinguisher out, and ran for the car. There were 5 people that pulled over, in the rain, and risked their safety to help make sure that the driver and passenger got out of that car. One lady was an off-duty EMT and she cared for their cuts/bruises. After the fire truck showed up, everyone drove off.

You always hear about the bad stuff, not the good stuff. Same goes for the business world. The 1% of companies that are run like GM, AIG, etc are a bunch of selfish crooks. The other 99%, like me and our company, are solid hardworking Americans who pay their fair share of taxes and contribute to growing the American economy. Your clan that is in office right now is doing nothing but hindering America's ability to prosper.